UNAUTHORIZED PRACTICE OF LAWAIDING A LAWYER, NOT ADMITTED IN TEXAS, TO
PERFORM SERVICES OF A LAW CLERK AND SERVICES PERMITTED BY HIS LICENSE BEFORE THE U.S.
PATENT OFFICE. While a Texas firm may not, by employing a lawyer not admitted
to practice in Texas, aid him in the unauthorized practice of law, a Texas firm may employ
a lawyer, prior to his admission to the Texas bar, as a law clerk and also to perform
those services which he is authorized to perform by virtue of his license to practice
before the U.S. Patent Office.

X, licensed to practice in Oklahoma and before the U.S. Patent Office, has moved to
Texas. He plans to join the Texas firm of W and V after he is admitted to the Texas Bar. X
is presently employed by W and V. He is also rendering legal services to some Oklahoma
clients. He can be of service to the firm of W and V in preparing patent applications for
clients of W and V. Can X: (1) Represent his Oklahoma clients in his own name prior to be
admitted to the Texas Bar? (2) Represent his Oklahoma clients in the name of W and V prior
to being admitted to the Texas bar? (3) Handle the legal problems of his Oklahoma legal
clients if all correspondence is handled by W or by V? (4) Prepare patent applications and
other papers for filing in the Patent Office under his own name for a Texas client? (5)
Prepare patent applications and other papers for filing in the Patent Office in the name
of W and V for a Texas client? (6) Sign general correspondence under the firm name of W
and V?

Opinion

The opinion largely involves problems of the unauthorized practice of law in Texas.
Questions concerning the unauthorized practice of law are within the province of the
Unauthorized Practice of Law Committee, and the professional Ethics Committee has not been
delegated the authority to issue advisory opinions of that nature.

Until X is admitted to the Texas Bar, he is not subject to the Texas Canons. There is
an ethical problem, however, in regard to the activities of W and V; for Texas Canon 43 proscribes a lawyers aiding the practice
of law by a person not a member of the Texas Bar. Obviously, W and V may not ethically aid
X in engaging in activities which constitute the unauthorized practice of law in Texas.
Without attempting to decide or to issue an advisory opinion on the point, this committee
assumes that X is not engaged in the unauthorized practice of law when his work is
incident to the preparation and prosecution of patent applications before the patent
office and within the authority conferred upon him by virtue of the Patent Office
regulations, preemptive of state law; Sperry v. Florida, 10 L.Ed. 2d 428 (1963). If
these assumptions are correct, W and V do not violate Canon 43 by aiding X to perform
services that, because the services are those of a law clerk or those authorized by his
license from the U.S. Patent Office, do not constitute the unauthorized practice of law.
(9-0)